Wasting your time with things I find interesting, amusing, or enraging. Reinke does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations

Jobless Rate Climbs to 8.3 Percent, Creating More Anxiety for Obama and the LeftPosted by Daniel J. Mitchell

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Can we finally all agree that Keynesian economics is a flop? The politicians in Washington flushed about $800 billion down the toilet and we got nothing in exchange except for anemic growth and lots of people out of work.

Indeed, we’re getting to the point where the monthly employment reports from the Labor Department must be akin to Chinese water torture for the Obama administration. Even when the unemployment rate falls, it gives critics an opportunity to recycle the chart below showing how bad the economy is doing compared to what the White House said would happen if the so-called stimulus was enacted.

The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts “marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons.” Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U-3 could be working as little as an hour a week. And the “marginally attached workers” include those who have gotten discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work. The age considered for this calculation is 16 years and over …

Unrest is simmering in some quarters of the Washington news universe regarding changes in the way the Department of Labor (DOL) manages its pre-release media “lockups” on sensitive data like weekly jobless benefits and unemployment.

For years, journalists participating in the lockups have shown up at DOL at the appointed time, then entered a limited-access area to receive the new data and prepare news stories for release as soon as official embargoes end.

The system insures that major news organizations get the data as soon as possible and allows journalists covering the release get a jump on providing analyses and opinion about the data.

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Fillichio reminded participants that there are only 20-30 seats available for the lockups and that priority will be given by DOL in selecting participants to those that “are primarily journalistic enterprises.”

He also offered a one-sentence assurance that “the department will not consider editorial or political viewpoints in making credentialing decisions.”

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In other words, journalists will no longer be allowed to bring their laptops or other equipment to the lockups, they will have to use government-supplied equipment, described by Fillichio as including “a virtualized desktop running a Windows operation system, a web browser, word-processing software, an Adobe Reader application and secure file transfer capability. Equipment provided will not have wireless networking capability. Provisions will be in place for news organizations to transmit their stories over the Internet.”The changes evidently are in response at least in part to worries that some of the non-traditional news organizations allowed in recent years to participate in the lockups may not be using their access simply for journalistic purposes.

Since the stock market can rise or fall by hundreds of points as a result of such a data release, making sure nobody gets an advance peek at the data is critical to insuring the integrity of the process.

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Does anyone see the problems in this story?

(1) DOL won’t pick based on “political viewpoints”? TO even say that IMMEDIATELY raises a red flag an tells me that is EXACTLY what they are going to do.

(2) What’s a “primarily a journalistic enterprise”? So, as a blogger, I’m shut out. Sorry, excuse me. Put the DIKW (i.e., data, information, knowledge, wisdom) and release it to the Universe at the same time. The Press should get it at the same time as everyone else. Otherwise they are the “house organ”.

(3) Why am I the taxpayer paying for computers to benefit some segment of the business community? Are the costs of each seat in the “lockup” being paid by the organization renting them?

What can you do to minimize the impact of unemployment on your professional stature?

A. Keep your professional certifications, credentials and licenses up to date and involve yourself in activities that use your professional skills. Take temporary or part-time work in your industry if possible, or do unpaid volunteer work for nonprofits or charitable organizations that allow you to flex your professional muscles, Margolin added.

Also, you could consider starting your own consulting firm, suggested Julie Redfield, a talent management expert in the New York office of the PA Consulting Group. “Setting up a company — the Web site, the business license — can cost very little,” she said. “Use your network and get at least one or two small jobs that you can talk about on interviews and put on your résumé.”

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Over the years, I’ve opened and closed 4 “one man shows”. Shoulda, coulda, and woulda! Just keep it open eternally. Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee charges 500 per year. Argh! Website, call it 10 for the domain name and whatever you pay the web site service provider. Legal & accounting fees, call it under a grand. Business cards, 50$. SO for well under 2k$, you can have an LLC standing around. (Your accountant will tell you why you want an LLC. I’m not a lawyer, CPA, or MD. Nor do I play one on TV. I’m just your average everyday obnoxious know-it-all.)

(Your lawyer can explain why you might want to create several LLCs for holding assets. Ditto above. Wish I done that. If you do several at once, the unit cost per LLC goes down.)

Like your eternal domain name, keeping your email from making you captive of the ISP or WSP, you can always have coverage.

Record 1.2 Million People Fall Out Of Labor Force In One Month, Labor Force Participation Rate Tumbles To Fresh 30 Year LowSubmitted by Tyler Durden on 02/03/2012 08:51 -0500

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A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. As for the quality of jobs, as withholding taxes roll over Year over year, it can only mean that the US is replacing high paying FIRE jobs with low paying construction and manufacturing. So much for the improvement.

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Are you kidding me?

Comparing %s without comparing the numerators and denominators?

We need to switch to a number that can NOT be fudged.

Like dollars paid in the SSI “contribution”. That would tell us, how many folks are working. And, how much are they earning.

Now when those numbers go up and down, we’d have numbers we could hang our hat on.